The Changing of the Beard

It happens every spring. For weeks I tell Mitch the weather is getting warmer, his beard is getting scruffier, my neck and other tender places become ready to part with its grizzled Brillo nuzzlings. And nothing changes. Winter lasts forever in Colorado. And some years, so does my Winter Husband.

Then one day I arrived home. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In the backyard, the kids clamored for my services as trampoline safety monitor and hurried me over there, while their Dad shoveled away, transplanting rosebushes. I called a greeting his way. On the trampoline, my little girl told me about her day. She kept trying to convey some occurrence, and I thought I picked up the words “shaved” and “face,” as she gestured in the general direction of the rosebushes. My oh-so-very-slow brain (doubtless still occupied by benefits summaries and disability claims) transmuted this into some communication about the yard, the plants, her rich imaginary life peopled with all manner of creations who do amazing things.

Finally the man shoveling rosebushes turned to reveal his profile, and I beheld . . . my Summer Husband!

Goodbye, Brillo, until first snowfall!


Hello, Smooth Operator!


Ahhhhhh, Springtime in the Rockies!

Passing the Towel Along

I keep a towel on my desk. Just an ordinary white hand towel, like you might find in a nice hotel. Its place of honor, draped across a picture frame on my desk, comes from the words, embroidered in black and red, along with the Alliance logo:

Living the Call Together
Matthew 28:18-20
. . . by serving one another.

Soon after Dr. Gary Benedict was elected as President, Gary held a special chapel where he inducted the staff into the Order of the Towel, reminder of the call to serve. Gary chose one employee, an IT help desk guy, and knelt down and washed his feet in front of us all. Not your typical executive moment.

My job is all about service, answering questions, solving problems, reassuring panic, sometimes causing panic by reluctantly giving the bad news that seems to come too often in this line of work: “No, I’m sorry but our plan does not cover that.” To the best of my ability, never once allowing the caller to feel that it could be anything but an unmitigated delight to help him or her. And it really is my privilege. I wouldn’t work here if I didn’t feel that way.

Since I have the sort of brain which compulsively sorts paper clips - (once, at another job, I won’t tell you how many minutes I spent sorting a co-worker’s paperclips into jumbo and regular-sized heaps, just as a little gesture of niceness, only to have her reappear and sweep them all into her desk together, oblivious to my small effort) - honestly, I really don’t mind answering the same questions over and over and over. However, since my job is communications coordinator, eventually it does dawn on me that repetitive questions may signal a lack in the way I have explained things. So I write, re-write, and re-write the benefits summaries once more, attempting to steadily reduce those ambiguities which make the benefits realm so very bewildering to my precious people who already have plenty of challenges on their plates.

Mine is a desk job, physically undemanding. Usually I arrive home ready to stand and wash dishes, or run up and down stairs doing laundry, fixing dinner, playing with kids. I don’t sit much at home, except while the family eats dinner, and then only until someone wants seconds.

But one day, not long ago, my service had been literal and manual, dragging chairs and tables into a pleasing arrangement, arranging linens and place settings, filling water pitchers, cutting flower stems, and ending the evening by washing endless china and attempting not to break any (I only broke one this time, and then only because I leaned down in the elevator to adjust the stack on the cart, attempting to make it safer, and inadvertently knocked the top one off the stack in the process). Early the next morning, back again to set up breakfast, brew fresh coffee, make sure the lunch arrives and get everyone who needs to out the door to the airport on time. This happens twice a year, an enjoyable break in my sedentary routine. I love mingling with the guests and thanking them for their service to our participants. Their gift of time is valuable, their gift of expertise invaluable. I want them to feel special while they serve with farsighted wisdom and intense discussion. Hence the china.

After the second day, I went home to my family, inexplicably far more exhausted than I should have been, more than I normally am at such times. Instead of jumping up and down refilling my families’ plates and cups, I stretched on the sofa, dozing, but unwilling to leave my children again to go to bed. They played around me.

My three-year-old solicitously took my hands in hers, standing so close I could feel her sweet warm breath on my face. “I will wash your hands, Mama,” she offered. Without water, she went through the motions of washing my hands, using a Tupperware container, and a dishtowel to “dry me off.” Then she started on my feet. Taking my socks off, she carefully and thoroughly ministered to every toe, tenderly caressing my whole foot with her hands, and again without water, drying off my feet.

She has never done this before, or since. I don’t recall telling her the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. That one evening, nothing could have soothed my soul more thoroughly.

So now I have to ask: Gary, have you been sneaking into my house while I am at the office and teaching the lessons of the towel to my children?!

As Gary so visually emphasized that day in chapel, the ministry of the towel is an essential part of our call. For you to whom serving others is as natural as breathing, please remember that receiving the towel graciously and humbly is also an important discipline. If someone tries to wash your feet today, please let them!

Code of the Wounded Heart

“I can relate to a Jesus who was a husband and father . . .
I’ve never experienced feeling God’s father love toward me.” - a Da Vinci Code reader

I first heard about Da Vinci Code (the book) a couple of years ago when someone I love was reading it and shared excitedly with me. I don’t know if I even realized then that the book purports to be fiction, because my friend’s passion was deep. It touched a chord. I distinctly got the impression it was received- and embraced - as revisionist history.

Every time a movie comes out which is blasphemous or disrespectful to the Christian faith, I usually get several e-mails suggesting a response of various kinds from people of faith. I received two excellent suggestions and will pass along both ideas for your interest.

My friend Jim, who attends far more movies than I and is my movie information source, tells me “Da Vinci Code” bombed at the Cannes film festival, an intriguing bit of news. Someone who studies such things please tell me why you think this is.

Whether you choose to go see the movie, Othercott it as suggested below, or get a discussion guide from Focus on the Family, above all else, please - in the midst of the cynical, the caustic, the iconoclasts - please listen for those around you who are wounded hearts, to whom this book and movie appeals.

Focus on the Family has opened a new web site just to talk about Da Vinci Code: Know the Truth . . . Share the Truth

And here’s a great suggestion: The Othercott. I received the following indirectly from Barbara Nicolosi, Executive Director of Act One, although I don't know if it originated with her or elsewhere.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING MAY 19TH?

May 19th is the date the Da Vinci Code movie opens. A movie based on a book that wears its heresy and blasphemy as a badge of honor.

What can we as Christians do in response to the release of this movie?
I'm going to offer you the usual choices -- and a new one.

Here are the usual suspects:

A) We can ignore the movie.
........The problem with this option: The box office is a ballot box. The only people whose votes are counted are those who buy tickets. And the ballot box closes on the Sunday of opening weekend. If you stay home, you have lost your chance to make your vote heard. You have thrown your vote away, and from Hollywood's point of view, you don't count. By staying home, you do nothing to shape the decision-making process regarding what movies will make it to the big screen.

B) We can protest.
........The problem with this option: It doesn't work. Any publicity is good publicity. Protests not only fuel the box office, they make all Christians look like idiots (emphasis mine - AMEN TO THAT!). And again, protests and boycotts do nothing to help shape the decisions being made right now about what movies Hollywood will make in the next few years. (Or they convince Hollywood to make *more* movies that will provoke Christians to protest, which will drive the box office up.)

C) We can discuss the movie. We can be rational and be ready with study guides and workshops and point-by-point refutations of the lies promulgated by the movie.
........The problem with this option: No one's listening. They think they know what we're going to say already. We'll lose most of these discussions anyway, no matter how prepared we are, because

the power of story always trumps the power of facts (emphasis mine- this is now one of my life quotes as a writer)

(why do you think Jesus taught in parables?!). And once again: rational discussion of history does nothing to affect Hollywood's choices regarding what movies to make.

But there's a fourth choice. On May 19th, you should go to the movies. Just go to another movie. Save the date now. May 19th, or May 20th. No later than Sunday, May 21st -- that's the day the ballot box closes. You'll get a vote, the only vote Hollywood recognizes: The power of cold hard cash laid down on a box office window on opening weekend.

Use your vote. Don't throw it away. Vote for a movie other than DVC. If enough people do it, the powers that be will notice. They won't have a choice.

The major studio movie scheduled for release against DVC is the DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge. The trailers look fun, and you can take your kids. And your friends. And their friends. In fact, let's all go see it. Let's rock the box office in a way no one expects -- without protests, without boycotts, without arguments, without rancor. Let's show up at the box office ballot box and cast our votes. And buy some popcorn, too. May 19th. Mark your calendars now: Over the Hedge's opening weekend. Buy a ticket.And spread the word. Forward this e-mail to all the Christians in your address book. Post it on your blogs. Talk about it to your churches. And let's all go to the movies.

High in the Sky Apple Pie Hopes

Next time you're found with your chin on the ground,
Just remember that ant
Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant

My weekends tend to roller coaster between anticipated relaxation, industrious housecleaning, and the dramatic tension of competing expectations.

My after-hours clients clamor for my services: “What’s for dinner?” “Look, Mama, I washed Chidawgo.” “Mom, can you guess which droid I am?” “Sweetheart, can you search Fruitless Mulberry? We need a good climbing tree.” And even Zydeco chimes in clearly, “Pleeeeeeeease play with meeeeeeeeee.”

Every time my kids ask me to play with them, I feel put upon. I want my time. And the reality of the undone mountains of laundry and dishes presses upon me. I’m sure other parents feel the same clouds of gloom upon surveying boxes full of Lego parts mixed with doll bibs, microscopic GI Joe hand grenades, Mom-I-Love-You scribbled on napkins, and tin-foil-glued-to-a-paper-plate creations too precious for trash, too crumpled for anything else. Am I supposed to ignore all this and just play with my kids? They think so!

And not just any kind of quality time will do. Expectations are very specific. I must strategize military attacks, practice light saber strokes, manipulate PS2 controls in such a way that R2D2 levitates across the abyss rather than hurtle screaming into the hot lava. Often as I sit attentively watching a child build spaceships or tuck a doll to nap beneath a dishrag, just trying to meld with his or her world after my work week, I face the recurring accusation, “Don’t you want to play with me? You’re supposed to be playing with me.” Although I’m right there on the floor, it’s not enough to spectate; I must animate small figures in each hand, making them fly or fight or sing in enough voices and facial contortions to exhaust Martin Short. If I pause to draw breath, the little prosecuting attorneys are at me again. Amplified by the one in my head.

I believe with all my heart that playing with my kids is of eternal significance – perhaps more than anything I do all week, and that’s saying a lot. So why can’t I muster up more enthusiasm for it?

To compound my angst, sometimes when I offer to play a game or read a book, my overtures are rebuffed. Today, as I attempted to insinuate myself into a game of matching picture cards with my 3-year old, she tactfully tried to get me out of her way. “You can play with me as long as you share,” she admonished, “but don’t you need to make dinner?”

I guess she told me.

You do realize, when I say in my blog profile, “Being a world class wife and Mom is my most important job,” I’m not actually claiming to be that. Not today anyhow, crushed beneath the awareness of my own imperfections.

Rather, that statement is a faith verbalization, calling the things that be not as though they are. Calling myself to a greatness I have yet to manifest.

Sarah must have felt pretty foolish hollering hubby in for dinner, “Dad of a thousand sons!” – that new name Abraham insisted she call him. The servants nudged each other and whispered, “They’re in denial about their fertility problem.”

Some struggle to conceive, others of us struggle to parent those precious, incorrigible “products of conception” for the next twenty to forty years.

I wrote my blog profile one Saturday morning, full of the fresh hope a dawning weekend brings. By Sunday night, my kid-tolerance sunk to a low level, again, I felt convicted and incriminated by that phrase, “World Class Mom,” taunting me with its unreality. I told Mitch I would delete it from my profile. “You just need to delete your attitude,” he retorted.

Of course, he’s right. (If Mitch is ever not right, I will blog the occasion in detail and go dancing in the streets.)

I grumped a bit, worked myself out of the attitude and left the profile as is. Meanwhile, I scraped the unburnt top layer of lasagna onto Mitch’s plate for dinner. Did I mention world class wife, also?

I might as well hitch my wagon to a star, even if I fall off backwards when it turns out to be a meteor.